Introduction

HDMI for the Masses

In our last AMD 690G motherboard review, we praised the Sapphire Pure Innovation HDMI for being a great all-in-one motherboard that was designed to appeal to both the business and entertainment crowd. If anything, Sapphire did a great job maximizing the potential of the new chipset and we learned that the small micro ATX form factor can still hold a few surprises. Of course, Sapphire isn't the only cat in town to take on the AMD 690G.

ASUS takes a break from its barrage of Intel P965 motherboard SKUs over the past few months to focus on AMD's new chipset, but unlike Sapphire, ASUS does what they do best, and that's to specialize. Instead of one board to fit every usage model, ASUS has two variants of the AMD 690G: The no-frills M2A-VM for the more business minded and the entertainment focused M2A-VM HDMI. Both boards are essentially designed on the same PCB; the only difference being that the latter features additional FireWire support as well as being bundled with additional audio and video connectors. In this review, we take a look at what the M2A-VM HDMI has to offer.